The Numbered Days of Meaninglessness

“For it seemed to me that there was no ultimate goal for man. Man was beginning a grotesque and bewildered fight with nature—nature, that by the divine and magnificent accident had brought us to where we could fly in her face. She had invented ways to rid the race of the inferior and thus give the remainder strength to fill her higher—or, let us say, her more amusing—though still unconscious and accidental intentions. And, actuated by the highest gifts of the enlightenment, we were seeking to circumvent her. In this republic I saw the black beginning to mingle with the white—in Europe there was taking place an economic catastrophe to save three or four diseased and wretchedly governed races from the one mastery that might organize them for material prosperity."

“We produce a Christ who can raise up the leper—and presently the breed of the leper is the salt of the earth. If any one can find any lesson in that, let him stand forth.”

“There’s only one lesson to be learned from life, anyway,” interrupted Gloria, not in contradiction but in a sort of melancholy agreement.

“What’s that?” demanded Maury sharply.

“That there’s no lesson to be learned from life.”

--From The Beautiful and Damned, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I like Fitzgerald. That is, I like his work. This exchange is rather telling. For all of its gut wrenching pessimism, its unapologetic racism, and its godlessness, at least it sets forth Darwinism and nihilism, two sides of the same tarnished coin, consistently. In the beginning of the modern world, men proudly found meaning in meaninglessness. They paraded their self perceived intellectual skills by arrogantly denying all that is good, decent, and respectable, anything that smacked of that pale faced Galilean. Men of mental capacity, you see, dwarfed the feeble minds of the leper race, the credulous masses, the ignorant faithful. But, then, when their "meaningful meaninglessness," at first but a mere idea, morphed into an evil force, it produced two world wars, the potential for world annihilation, and, in short, the bloodiest century the world has ever witnessed. So, they retreated to a higher hill and turned on their one time idol. Now, the would be god almost personified. No longer a mere idea, he took on form. Meaninglessness, the captain of horror, was the enemy, mercilessly attacking their right flank, even as Christianity attacked from the left. Some rallied to support the right with the armies of existentialism. When these failed, they brought in their reinforcements in waves. Hedonism, socialism, relativism, deconstructionism, scientism, postmodernism, among others not worthy of naming, all sallied bravely forth, but all plummeted headlong into the dark trenches awaiting them. That great demon, whose mighty claws never relinquish their victim once allowed to find their grasp, gives them no reprieve, no rest. Yet, in all of this, the children of modernity have neglected their left flank. The armies of Christianity were considered too weak, too silly, too irrelevant, too anachronistic to require thoughtful resistance. It was enough to catapult an occasional, irrationally and crudely placed boulder when the clamor became too loud or intolerable. The riffraff, after all, deserve no better. But, through it all, the numbers have grown and the ranks of Christianity have swollen. Even now, perhaps inadvertently, the faithful lines advance against the gates of hell only to find that the gates are not manned. The flank is broken, the post is abandoned. The once proud army that sought to build its edifice to the heights of heaven, to invade the Divine court and remove the crown from the Blessed Head, lies drunk within the comfort of its exposed encampment, unwilling to fight, proclaiming "Peace, peace!" when there is no peace, proclaiming "Truth, truth!" when they do not believe in truth, proclaiming victory even on the eve of war. They are indeed a hoard now, a disconnected, disorganized group of ruffians ripe for defeat. Yet, the children of modernity are a mere obstacle, a prelude to and victims of the real enemy, that ancient demon who has been given such reign over the hearts of men. It is he who must be slain, and slay him we will, for the fell Champion of Truth, the One who is Himself death's bane, will find no equal on the field of battle.

Honor, Liberty, Truth!